Tests Aim to Protect Brains of High School Athletes

Colby Medical Director Paul Berkner is president of the Maine Concussion Management Initiative, an organization that is providing baseline cognitive testing for high school athletes in Maine, allowing coaches and trainers to know when a student athlete is ready to resume play. “[I]t appears that a child who suffers a concussion, then has another blow to the head before they have healed the first concussion, that second blow to the head – or injury actually, it doesn’t have to be a blow to the head – causes worse symptoms, if not death,” Berkner says.